Christopher Kloeble - Almost Everything Very Fast

Then, by Wickenhäuser’s side, I stepped into the parish church, and saw the casket. On its side a brass plate was mounted, upon which ELSE was etched in curving characters. So different from those lines of lentils, arranged with a shaking hand. In the cool air of the church hung the odors of wood polish, candle wax, and, above all, incense. There was no trace of grease, dried flowers, or bitterness.

I swallowed my tears. No one, especially not Wickenhäuser, was to know what I felt — I cried inside, didn’t squeeze the tears out of my eyes, but rather pulled them into my head, down my throat, and stowed them away in my belly.

On the way home after the funeral, Wickenhäuser said, “Let’s celebrate!” and we turned in at the Iron Pine Tavern; Wickenhäuser ordered for himself an ale and for me a sweet dumpling.

“Don’t make such a face, rascal.”

“I’m not sad,” I lied.

“Good,” he said, “neither am I,” not much better at lying.

“But she was your mother!”

“That’s what she always claimed, anyway.”

“If she wasn’t, why did you take care of her?”

“Me? It was you who took care of her!”

The ale and the dumpling arrived. For the first time in my life I tasted custard, it was almost like fresh honey, only much better, and while I delightedly shoved spoonful after spoonful into my mouth, Wickenhäuser described to me how for years on end his parents had prevented him from leaving the house: with stories about monsters that lived in the cities, with a crushing daily round of chores, and panicked screams if he ever so much as touched the latch without permission. After his father had died in the war, his mother had sat silent all day long, wrapped in her bridal gown, staring through the walls, and through Wickenhäuser. In the end, it wasn’t that he’d been fleeing into the great wide world, but fleeing from her.

“She hated me,” said Wickenhäuser.

“Why do you think that?”

“She made me feel as if I’d killed my father.”

“But he died in the war.”

Wickenhäuser heaved a that’s-just-how-she-was sigh.

“I don’t believe that a mother can actually hate her children,” I said.

“If that’s the case, how come you aren’t with yours?”

I didn’t say anything.

“My little rascal.” Wickenhäuser wiped a bit of vanilla custard from my chin with his napkin. “We’re all better off without our parents.”

That same night I shunted my memories of Else from the living to the dead side of things. It didn’t show much sense, letting thoughts of people who didn’t exist anymore make you sad.

December arrived, and with it the first frost, and the recognition that between Wickenhäuser and me there existed a sort of unspoken agreement. As long as I didn’t make a nuisance of myself, Wickenhäuser wouldn’t send me away. The undertaker was single, and appreciated the company. Every once in a while he invited over men who wore makeup like women, or a woman and a man who both wore makeup like women, or, rarely, just women without makeup. Such visits were as much of a passion for Wickenhäuser as a support for the bereaved. On many a Friday, but most often on Saturdays, before sunrise and from out of the foggy gray, they would step into the house, wrapped in long cloaks. On such occasions the fire leapt merrily in the hearth, and Wickenhäuser would recite new poems for his guests in his shrill voice, which I could hear all the way from where I lay up on the second floor:

If you hear this

then I don’t not love you anymore,

no,

I love you more.

Later, when the night was well advanced and smelled of schnapps and tobacco, Wickenhäuser would conduct one or another of these guests to his bedroom. The morning after, I noticed, the undertaker always changed his sheets.

I ate with him, accompanied him on shopping trips, helped him buff the coffins to a high shine. I didn’t earn a single reichsmark for any of this, but was allowed to sleep in a bed as soft as one million mullein flowers, dine on beef tongue, foie gras, and wild strawberries with cream, and dress myself in clothes cut to measure, without which I could barely fall asleep anymore, so cozy was the costly cloth against my skin. Between the spelling lessons I gave to the illiterate mason so that he wouldn’t blunder when carving the headstones, and arranging bunches of flowers (I added a couple of daises to every one), I had plenty of time to explore Schweretsried. Whenever I stepped out the door with Wickenhäuser, it was as if I were his Most Beloved Possession — I was introduced to everyone the undertaker knew, however slightly. I felt especially awkward when Wickenhäuser proudly alluded to my “lovely, lofty brow” or my “lovely pitch-black hair” or my “lovely figure,” and called me Adonis, instead of rascal. Thus I preferred to take my walks alone. Having arrived in the big wide world, I soaked up every trifle: the cough-inducing fumes of the automobiles; the discomfort in the faces of former customers, for whom I was Death’s emissary; the brawling at the Iron Pine, democrats versus reactionaries; the hue and cry of the Yugoslavian book peddler, representative of a dying breed of conscientious salesmen, who struggled to read every book he had in stock, for which reason this Yugoslav was probably the only resident of Schweretsried who actually registered the appearance of Mein Kampf; all the varieties of seasonings, from oregano to turmeric (and their spellings!); the soft glow of the gas lanterns.

However, my fascination often gave way to anger at the pedestrians who crossed my path or bumped into me. I couldn’t stand walking behind someone, the streets seemed overcrowded, saturated with noisy, foul-smelling men, which is why I made a point of breezing past all those walkers, until I reached the city limits or some deserted area whose quiet reminded me of home, and of Anni. The longing for Anni was like an invisible thread coiled around my chest. Now and then it was as if she tugged on it, so that my heart throbbed and I was afraid I might forget her. Then I’d ask myself why I hadn’t tried to make contact with her by now, and I answered that it was impossible: there was no mail delivery to Segendorf, Wickenhäuser’s next excursion south was beyond the horizon, and I was much too young to travel on my own.

Looking back, I think these were only excuses to salve a guilty conscience. The real reason was that I preferred Schweretsried to Segendorf. Even if I had to sacrifice the proximity of my sister.

One morning Wickenhäuser and I were polishing a coffin that a local glass blower had chosen for his daughter. Burglars had slit her throat with shards of glass from one of her father’s vases.

“What’s your opinion, rascal?”

“About what?”

“About this girl’s death.”

“The thieves are murderers. They ought to be executed.”

“A fine opinion. But now: imagine a different truth.”

“Maybe the thieves broke into the wrong house at the wrong time? Maybe the girl … killed herself?”

“Clever as always, my little rascal. You see, it isn’t so hard. You can make sense of anything, if you want to, as long as you’re willing to exert your brain a bit. Everything can be true. What you decide to believe is always the truth. Remember that. Rascal, would you be happy as an undertaker?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It would be lonely.”